THOUGHTS ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY

When I take pictures which include bright, sunlit ground I sometimes go for a "high key" effect, trying to unite the composition with white or light colors, and deliberately flattening people out til they're just color shapes. The picture above is pretty extreme version of that (I didn't take it) but I thought I'd include it here because it makes the point so well.

A lot of times you get that effect by tilting the camera up and getting more bright sky. Here's (above) a picture emphasizing the ground...

...and here's (above) a slightly different one which includes the sky. The composition isn't nearly as appealing as the previous one but it makes my point about using the sky to add another bright element. I wish I could use my own pictures to illustrate this but they're all of my family and they get mad whenever I attempt to post pictures of them.

I like the way old black and white films use white. Somebody always gets the white shirt even if they're cowboys on the range. It helps the composition.

Or a white blouse.

On another subject, I hate commercial portrait photography. Mall-type photographers are always trying to use Rembrandt lighting and it looks terrible. The guy above is just too stark and three-dimensional. You can see every pore. Rembrandt pictures work best when the camera's at a distance and can flatten the subject out. Mall pictures are always taken in cramped spaces where the photographer's only a few feet away. Besides, not every face is appropriate for that kind of treatment.

I don't like this picture (above), but it's a slight improvement on the previous one. It's flatter at least, and the color isn't as jarring.

Maybe I'm giving the wrong impression by mentioning flat so often. I only use flattening long lenses for special pictures. Flat pictures with out-of-focus backgrounds killed the old Life Magazine. Maybe I'll do a blog on that one of these days.

Wouldn't it be great if mall photographers could do pictures like this (above)?

Or this (above)?

A DISCUSSION OF PLATO'S "REPUBLIC"

SOCRATES: "Glaucon, we've been through this before. You know the type of person
who would best rule the city."

GLAUCON: "Sure Socrates, the philosopher king."

SOCRATES: And what qualifies a person to be a philosopher king? "

GLAUCON: "He has to be honorable and have studied math til age 30."

SOCRATES: "And why should he study math?"



SOCRATES'S WIFE: "Because math is completely abstract and nobody ever has emotional arguments over it. Since all human activity can be expressed mathematically, a philosopher can settle disputes with numbers without fear of upsetting anyone."

WIFE'S FRIENDS: "Wow! That's cool!"

SOCRATES'S CONCUBINE: "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You can talk all you want about being honorable and all that but in our culture the honorable man is expected to serve without pay. This poor-but-honorable stuff sucks! Look at me! I'm your concubine and I can't afford underwear without holes!"

SOCRATES: "Those are virtuous holes. You should be proud of them."

WOMEN: "Boy, that Socrates knows how to pinch a penny!"



GLAUCON: "Quiet everybody! You're not giving Socrates a chance to answer! He says the philosopher king can solve the poor-but-honorable problem by appearing austere during the day and enjoying his luxuries at night, when the curtains are closed."

Um... why does everybody have their hands up? I'm just scratching my unmentionables."

FRIEND: "A different philosophy for the night? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of! And that thing about solving disputes with math is just plain silly! Why does anybody bother to read about Socrates, anyway?


GLAUCON: "Glad you asked! Socrates is weird alright, but he's completely honest, even when he's advocating dishonesty. He has a way of getting to the root of a problem, and he expresses it in simple, human and very memorable terms. You only realize how rare that is when you read other philosophers.

Was he right about math solving all disputes? No, of course not, but when you think about it there is no satisfactory solution to a lot of disputes. Socrates reminds us that we should seek objective solutions while remembering how liable to error we are, and he does it in a uniquely poetic way that's likely to stick in our minds. And the closed-curtain solution really is the best way to handle the concubine's problem. It's not perfect but can you think of anything better?

I don't blame anyone for thinking Socrates is silly or boring on the first hearing, but the day will come when you'll be glad you read about him.

Many, many thanks to Barbie Miller for the terrific pictures. I stole them from her site:

http://www.blogger.com/profile/06026247660227762916

HOW SOME WRITERS VIEW ARTISTS

When you talk to some animation writers you think they're viewing you the same way you view them, but that's a mistake. Every species sees the world through different eyes and that makes a difference.

Animation writers don't have compound eyes (yet) but the difference in vision is just as drastic. They also hear things differently.

You no doubt see yourself as reasonable and practical. I hate to say it, but that's not the way you are viewed.

When you start to speak the image degrades to something like the one above. This artist might be saying something like "There's not enough jokes in this script! If it's boring to draw then what makes you think the audience will want to see it!?" The writer hears only gibberish.

You might ask the writer, "Why are there so many characters in this show? Do they all have to be on screen at the same time? Why do I see the same characters in every series: the inventor, the minority computer whiz and the girl who can out think and outfight any boy? Why all the cliches?" The writer hears only, "Whine, whine! Grumble, grumble!"

The problem is that some writers can't write anything but that type of story. Take that away from them and they'd be out of a job. Another type of writer can can do better but they simply chose not to. They're freelancing on two other shows and cliches are easier to write quickly. These types are definitely not interested in listening to complaints by artists.

The artist says, "Why can't cartoonists write some of these shows? We know what draws well, you guys are just guessing! At least let the show have a real artist/director who can hire his own writers." The writer hears only gibberish again.

The artist says, "These scripts are way, way too long! I have to work overtime for free to do pages that'll just be thrown in the wastebasket for length. Gimmie a break will ya?" The writer hears, "I'm too lazy to do these extra pages, which I admit are fine examples of the writer's art. Can I use your couch?"

The frustrated cartoonist storms out of the writer's office believing that the primal image of his manly, angry back will compel the writer to have remorse. That's not what the writer sees.

HOW DID ROBERT CRUMB DO IT?

In my opinion Crumb was the best practicing artist in any medium of the 60s and 70s. No easel painter or photographer captured the times like he did. Maybe it's worth taking the time to figure out how he did it.

Crumb shocked everybody with his gritty, realistic inner city landscapes (above). Older people didn't seem to mind this ugly and depressing architecture but young people were steeped in bright mod fashions and appealing images in movies and magazines and they hated the old stuff. Nobody knew exactly how much they hated it until Crumb came along and satirized it.

City streets began to fill with black people wearing outrageous clothes. Nobody would give it a second glance now, but back then white suburbanites were constantly surprised by it. Crumb's the only one who bothered to draw it.

Back then adults didn't watch TV much and they were worried about the effects of TV on kids (above). They had good reason because the modern, clean, exciting world we saw on TV made the ugly, slow-mo real world seem intolerable. Once again, only Crumb bothered to draw that.

Other artists like Peter Max tried to come up with pretty, contemporary styles to represent the modern world. Crumb used a gritty, 1920s style (above). Max misread the generation. He thought theirs was just another fashion change. He failed to get a sense of how deeply the hippies were disgusted by the ugliness around them and how much they wanted warmth and personal connection. Crumb's style was the only one that reflected that.

There was a new kind of sexuality on the streets (above) but normal artists weren't picking up on it. Glossy magazines had pictures of slick models wearing weird, high-fashion mod clothes but that was the world of glamour...it didn't have much to do with what was on the street. Crumb was the first to suggest that the casual clothes real girls were wearing were sexy.

Crumb resisted getting into a rut. Sometimes he would do fine-artsy type pictures like the one above.

Young white suburbanites had mixed feelings about the newly liberated blacks (above). On the one hand they welcomed the "soul" and style of the blacks, on the other hand they feared the ignorance and coarseness that some blacks brought with them. Young whites of the period were firmly and idealistically committed to civil rights, but they must have found themselves wondering if they had opened Pandora's Box. Only Crumb managed to capture this anxiety.

Are there any parallels to today's situation? What should cartoonists be drawing now? That's a tough question but I'll take a stab at it. My belief is that, unlike the hippies, this generation doesn't want to have its nose rubbed in the ugliness of modern cities. Underground comics that stress sloppy, depressing environments are missing the mark and will fail. The society that's coming will reward artists who can create romantic alternatives to what we have now. That's why the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings films are so popular. 'Just my opinion. I could be wrong.

The one thing I'm certain of is that you better fill your sketchbooks with drawings of baggy while it's still here. When it's gone it'll be gone forever. Emos are wearing stovepipe jeans and they're the new trendsetters.

PHILOSOPHERS I DON'T LIKE

Actually I do like Nietzche in the sense of having affectionate feelings for him, I just don't buy into a word of what he says. I'm always amazed when fans of his tell me that they felt liberated after reading him. Nietzche had no intention of liberating people like them. He would have been appalled at the thought! His desire was to subordinate them to a new master, the superman.

I hate to say it, but Nietzche was not a nice guy. He was reputedly nice to his students and friends and some of his writings have an appealing quality, but when it came to content he was able to steel himself to astonishing harshness. He didn't care who got hurt. His philosophy seemed to be, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.


Of course the National Socialists loved Nietzche, in fact it's hard to imagine nazism without Nietzche. Fans like to say that his name was hijacked by thugs who didn't understand him, but I think they understood him surprisingly well. If you read what Nietzche actually said you see dozens of parallels with the kind of things that came out of Germany in the 30s. I don't think Nietzche would have approved of Hitler or the Holocaust but that doesn't let him off the hook. The spirit ofNational Socialism owed a lot to Nietzche and it's silly to ignore that.

One of the reasons Nietzche is so hotly debated is that his opinions are so hard to pin down. He's both mild and harsh in the same book, sometimes in the same paragraph. Nice guy, hard guy...it depends which sentense you're reading. It's well known that he was clinically crazy later in life but, reading him, it's hard to resist the notion that he was skewered even in mid-life. He had tons of literary talent but it's hard to imagine that he was ever taken seriously as a philosopher.

The other guy that I don't like is Machievelli. He looks like such a sweet guy in the portrait above, but he was anything but sweet in "The Prince, " which is a truly disturbing book.

I'm familiar with the argument that he was the founder of modern political science and was simply trying to save his city from ruin. It doesn't wash. We already had political science written by the Greeks and Romans. Machievelli simply added venality to it. As for the city falling apart, you wonder if the cure was worse than the disease.

The harm might have been contained if only a handfull of princes had the book but the printing press made it accessable to everyone. All of a sudden lots of ordinary people were wondering if they should fight dirty to get what they wanted. People who stuck to traditional ideals of honesty and charity must have found themselves wondering if they were patsies. I like the modern world but it has an undeniable coarse and abrasive tone to it. Machiavelli's one of the people responsible for that.

BACKSTAGE AT THEORY CORNER

Tour Guide: "Did you know that every year hundreds of parents and children from local schools take the Theory Corner Tour? Here's the latest bunch, anxiously gathering up their cameras and autograph books as they pull into the parking lot."

Tour Guide: "The studio's all abuzz because today we're filming 'Halloween Story.' It's the scariest thing we've ever done here."

[If you haven't read it yet, "Halloween Story" is the post beneath this one.]

Tour Guide: "The sets are massive! It takes rows of powerful arc lights just to make the the living room set look authentic. Wait, there's Uncle Eddie now! Maybe we can get him to say a few words!"

Uncle Eddie: "Hi kids! Boy, did you luck out! We're just about to film the climax of the story! You're gonna die when you see this!"

Uncle Eddie: "Here's Kali, the photographer! Hey Kali, meet your fans! She's really got a knack for horror! She's always saying, 'More extreme! Exaggerate!', and I do. Gee, I hope my mother doesn't see this stuff!"

Uncle Eddie: "OK, it's time to shoot! You kids stand over there, and don't touch anything! All right, gotta do my breathing exercizes...find my center...that's it...focus on the imaginary kid I'll be talking to..."

Uncle Eddie: "OK...... ready!"

Uncle Eddie "Sooooo little Trick or Treater, you want candy! Candy's all that matters to you, isn't it? I went to all the trouble of putting this bread and butter together but no, that's not good enough for you! It has to be candy!"

Uncle Eddie: "JEZEBEL! People like you give kids a bad name!

Uncle Eddie: "Here, I know you'd like this bread if you only tasted it. Let me cut a slice for you!"

Uncle Eddie: "I KNOW YOU'RE GONNA LIKE IT!!!!"

Kid: "WAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! (CRIES)

Uncle Eddie: "Huh? What? Hey, it's just a story! Aw, poor little kid! Here, take this lollipop! Er... maybe the tour oughta move on to the next thing."

Angry parents glower at Uncle Eddie as they pass.

Uncle Eddie: "Heh, heh...happy, um... halloween!"

Tour Guide: "This part's for adults only. Fans of Theory Corner know that we frequently have beautiful women discuss philosophy! We get into some pretty heavy stuff here!"


Tour Guide: "Theory Corner spares no expense to find women who actually like philosophy! Lots of times the discussion goes on for hours after the shoot. Sometimes...


Tour Guide: "AAAAAAAA!!!! Who let the little boy in here!?"


Uncle Eddie: "What's the matter!? Are you all right, kid!? Here. Put your head down, you won't feel so sick that way! You know, I know it's hard to believe, but someday you'll actually like to see women like that...honest! Trust me! Um...you're not gonna sue are you?"

Tour Guide: "Well, that's the tour! What do you think?"

Kids: "YAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY!!!!!!!!!